United States v. Lawrence ( 2017 )

Not for Publication in West's Federal Reporter
United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 16-1244
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Appellee,
v.
JEREMY LAWRENCE,
Defendant, Appellant.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Mark L. Wolf, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Thompson, Stahl, and Kayatta,
Circuit Judges.
Gordon W. Spencer on brief for appellant.
Michael J. Crowley, Assistant United States Attorney, with
whom Carmen J. Ortiz, United States Attorney, was on brief, for
appellee.
January 13, 2017
STAHL, Circuit Judge. Defendant-Appellant Jeremy
Lawrence raises a single narrow issue for our consideration on
appeal. Could a law enforcement officer objectively and reasonably
believe that a driver had violated the Massachusetts marked lanes
statute, Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 89, § 4A, after observing the right
two wheels of the driver's vehicle cross a "fog line"1 by
approximately two feet while traveling on a two-lane road? Based
on our review of the statute's text and relevant Massachusetts
case law, we agree with the district court that a law enforcement
officer could hold such a belief under these particular factual
circumstances. Accordingly, we affirm.
I. Facts and Background
On June 21, 2013, Detective Michael Reynolds ("Detective
Reynolds"), saw a black sedan traveling at a rapid rate of speed
on Union Street in Braintree, Massachusetts. Union Street is a
secondary, two-lane road, with each lane going in opposite
directions. The road is, for the most part and in the area relevant
1"The term 'fog line' generally refers to 'the white line on
the right-hand side of [a road] that separates the driving lane
from the shoulder.'" United States v. Diaz, 802 F.3d 234, 238 n.8
(2d Cir. 2015) (quoting State v. Kempa, 235 S.W.3d 54, 58 n.2 (Mo.
Ct. App. 2007)).
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to this case, divided by a solid yellow line and framed by white
fog lines.
As the sedan approached, and then passed, his own marked
police cruiser, Detective Reynolds noticed that its right front
and rear tires had drifted outside its travel lane, crossing the
fog line by approximately two feet.2 Detective Reynolds quickly
did a computer check on the sedan's license plate number in his
cruiser, and found that the vehicle was registered to Shawn
Woodford of 51 Storrs Avenue in Braintree. The day prior,
Detective Reynolds had received a tip that the Quincy Police
Department was investigating the defendant-appellant, Jeremy
Lawrence, for cocaine trafficking and that he possessed a vehicle
in Braintree registered under Woodford's name and address.
Detective Reynolds proceeded to stop the sedan,
believing that the driver's crossing of the fog line constituted
a "marked lanes violation" in contravention of Chapter 89, Section
4A of the Massachusetts General Laws.3 His tip proved accurate,
as Lawrence turned out to be the sedan's driver. During later
2 Detective Reynolds had parked his cruiser by a stop sign
and crosswalk near the intersection of Alexander Road and Union
Street.
3 Violation of this provision is a criminal misdemeanor
punishable by a fine. Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 89, § 5; see, e.g.,
Commonwealth v. Fleenor, 652 N.E.2d 899, 900 n.1 (Mass. App. Ct.
1995).
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searches of Lawrence's person and the vehicle, Detective Reynolds
seized twenty-one small bags of crack cocaine.
On April 4, 2014, Lawrence filed a motion to suppress
the seized drugs, challenging the lawfulness of the traffic stop
and the ensuing searches on Fourth Amendment grounds. The district
court held an evidentiary hearing, after which it denied the motion
to suppress. As pertains to this appeal, the court concluded that
it was unclear whether Lawrence's conduct actually violated
Section 4A. However, the court ruled that Detective Reynolds had
nonetheless effectuated a lawful stop because he had, at worst,
made an objectively reasonable mistake in concluding that a
violation had occurred. The court then also confirmed the
lawfulness of the ensuing searches.
Lawrence does not challenge the district court's
conclusion as to these searches on appeal. Instead, Lawrence's
sole argument is that the initial traffic stop was unlawful,
arguing that a driver does not violate Section 4A simply because
he or she crosses a fog line unless there is also evidence that
doing so was unsafe. He also claims that no reasonable police
officer could conclude otherwise.
II. Analysis
When reviewing the denial of a motion to suppress, we
review the district court's factual findings for clear error and
its conclusions of law de novo. United States v. Dubose, 579 F.3d
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117, 120 (1st Cir. 2009). Under the Fourth Amendment, a traffic
stop constitutes a seizure of both the stopped vehicle and its
occupants, meaning the stop "must satisfy a standard of objective
reasonableness." United States v. Arnott, 758 F.3d 40, 43 (1st
Cir. 2014) (citing Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 19 (1968)). To that
end, a traffic violation is an objectively reasonable basis for a
traffic stop. Id. at 44 n.5 (noting that defendant "roll[ing]
through a stop sign . . . provided an independently sufficient
ground for stopping the car"). Thus, "[a] traffic stop is
constitutional if an officer has a reasonable suspicion of unlawful
conduct involving a motor vehicle or its operation." United States
v. Jenkins, 680 F.3d 101, 104 (1st Cir. 2012). See generally
United States v. Monteiro, 447 F.3d 39, 43 (1st Cir. 2006) ("In
evaluating whether reasonable suspicion existed, we 'look at the
totality of the circumstances of each case to see whether the
detaining officer ha[d] a particularized and objective basis for
suspecting legal wrongdoing.'") (alteration in original) (quoting
United States v. Arvizu, 534 U.S. 266, 273 (2002)).
As relevant here, reasonable suspicion can rest on an
objectively reasonable mistake of law. See Heien v. North
Carolina, 135 S. Ct. 530, 540 (2014) (concluding that officer's
mistaken belief that ambiguous vehicle code required more than one
functional brake light was objectively reasonable). However, "an
officer can gain no Fourth Amendment advantage through a sloppy
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study of the laws he is duty-bound to enforce." Id. at 539-40.
To that effect, Justice Kagan expanded on the objective
reasonableness requirement in her Heien concurrence, stating that
an officer's mistake of law is objectively reasonable "when the
law at issue is 'so doubtful in construction' that a reasonable
judge could agree with the officer's view." Id. at 541 (Kagan,
J., concurring) (quoting The Friendship, 9 F. Cas. 825, 826 (C.C.D.
Mass. 1812 (No. 5,125)). Under this framework, then, if a mistake
of law leads an officer to initiate a traffic stop but the mistake
is objectively unreasonable, any evidence stemming from the
traffic stop should be suppressed. See id. at 536 (majority
opinion).
Here, the district court's factual findings regarding
the circumstances of the traffic stop are essentially undisputed.
We therefore limit our analysis to the district court's
interpretation of Section 4A and whether, considering the totality
of the circumstances, an officer could have reasonably suspected
that Lawrence had committed a violation of that provision.4
4We note that "[r]easonableness in this context is a
construct that must be judged according to objective criteria; it
is not dependent on an individual officer's subjective motives."
United States v. Ruidíaz, 529 F.3d 25, 29 (1st Cir. 2008). Thus,
"the actual motivations of the individual officers involved" are
of no import. Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 813 (1996).
Consequently, the possibility that something other than the
purported traffic violation may have motivated Detective Reynolds
to stop Lawrence's vehicle is not legally relevant.
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The applicable portion of the Massachusetts marked lanes
statute reads as follows:
When any way has been divided into lanes, the driver
of a vehicle shall so drive that the vehicle shall
be entirely within a single lane, and he shall not
move from the lane in which he is driving until he
has first ascertained if such movement can be made
with safety.
Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 89, § 4A.
Lawrence focuses on the last clause of this provision,
arguing that Section 4A only applies to unsafe crossings of the
lines between travel lanes, and not to innocuous crossings of the
fog line.5 The Government, meanwhile, emphasizes that Lawrence
violated the statute when he failed to "drive" his vehicle
"entirely within a single lane" once he crossed the fog line. The
final clause is irrelevant, the Government continues, because
nothing suggests that Lawrence meant to "move from the lane in
which he [was] driving" to another location. Nonetheless, the
district court correctly observed that under Heien we need not
resolve whether crossing a fog line on a two-lane road is a
violation of Massachusetts law. We need only decide whether
Detective Reynolds reasonably thought it was. Compare Heien, 135
5 Lawrence briefly contends that it is not clear whether the
road on which he was driving had been "divided into lanes" as
envisioned by the statute. He then immediately concedes, however,
that the fog line marks the "first" or "original" travel lane and
that unsafe crossings of the fog line could constitute a Section
4A violation.
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S. Ct. at 540 (concluding mistake of law was objectively reasonable
because police officer had misinterpreted ambiguous traffic-
related statutory provision that the state's appellate courts had
not previously addressed), with United States v. Flores, 798 F.3d
645, 649-50 (7th Cir. 2015) (concluding that police officer could
not reasonably have believed that motorist's use of license-plate
frame found on “vast” number of cars violated Illinois statute).
To that end, we agree with the district court that
Detective Reynolds's interpretation of Section 4A was objectively
reasonable. No Massachusetts court has squarely decided the issue,
and available state authorities6 suggest that it would require
"hard interpretive work" to overturn Detective Reynolds's judgment
that Massachusetts law forbids drivers, on roads divided into
lanes, from straying across a fog line in these circumstances.
See Heien, 135 S. Ct. at 541 (Kagan, J., concurring).
We start with the statute's language. Under
Massachusetts law, "[a] fundamental tenet of statutory
6 In these circumstances, we must make an "informed prophecy"
about how the highest state court would rule on questions of that
state's law. See, e.g., United States v. Tavares, 843 F.3d 1, 14
(1st Cir. 2016); Ambrose v. New Eng. Ass'n of Schs. & Colls., Inc.,
252 F.3d 488, 497-98 (1st Cir. 2001) ("Our task . . . is to discern
the rule the state's highest court would be most likely to follow
. . . even if our independent judgment might differ."). While
doing so, "we may look to a variety of sources, including decisions
of the lower courts in Massachusetts, persuasive adjudications by
other courts, scholarly works, and considerations touching upon
public policy." Vt. Mut. Ins. Co. v. Zamsky, 732 F.3d 37, 42 (1st
Cir. 2013).
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interpretation is that statutory language should be given effect
consistent with its plain meaning and in light of the aim of the
Legislature unless to do so would achieve an illogical result."
Commonwealth v. Chamberlin, 45 N.E.3d 900, 905 (Mass. 2016)
(quoting In re Custody of Victoria, 39 N.E.3d 418, 425 (Mass.
2015)).
Here, Section 4A's use of the word "and" is instructive
since it seemingly creates two separate requirements for
motorists: first, that they "shall so drive that [their] vehicle
shall be entirely within a single lane," and second, that they
"shall not move from the lane in which [they are] driving until
[they have] first ascertained if such movement can be made with
safety." Cf. Flemings v. Contributory Ret. Appeal Bd., 727 N.E.2d
1147, 1150 (Mass. 2000) (relying on the word "and" to conclude
that the plain language of the relevant statute set out two
independent requirements for retirement-program eligibility).
The statute's use of the words "drive" and "move from"
also supports this reading, since it suggests that Section 4A
imposes one requirement when motorists travel or "drive" on a
particular "way" that has been divided into "lanes" and another
when they try to depart or "move from" one of these lanes, such as
when pulling off and stopping on the side of the road or turning
onto another road. In other words, concluding that Section 4A
imposes a specific duty on motorists to keep their vehicles from
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crossing the fog line while traveling ensures that all the words
of the statute are "given their ordinary and usual meaning, and
each clause or phrase is . . . construed with reference to every
other clause or phrase without giving undue emphasis to any one
group of words." City of Worcester v. Coll. Hill Props., LLC, 987
N.E.2d 1236, 1241 (Mass. 2013) (quoting Selectmen of Topsfield v.
State Racing Comm'n, 86 N.E.2d 65, 68 (Mass. 1949)).
Some Massachusetts courts that have touched on the
meaning of the statute similarly suggest that these types of
Section 4A violations need not be of an unsafe nature. See, e.g.,
Commonwealth v. Jewett, 31 N.E.3d 1079, 1082 (Mass. 2015) (stating,
in dicta, that a driver whose vehicle swerved over a fog line,
back into the travel lane, over the double yellow lines, and then
back over the fog line had committed "three marked lanes
violations" without opining on whether the maneuvers were unsafe);
Commonwealth v. Cameron, No. 14-P-1521, 2016 WL 393145, at *1 (Mass
App. Ct. Feb. 2, 2016) (per curium) (holding that a Section 4A
violation for crossing the yellow line between lanes did not
require evidence that the crossing had "created a risk of safety");
Commonwealth v. Shaker, No. 10-P-1991, 2011 WL 5146726, at *1 &
n.2 (Mass. App. Ct. Nov. 1, 2011) (declining to consider safety
concerns associated with driving outside of the travel lane, though
still concluding that a Section 4A violation had occurred once the
vehicle drifted over the broken lines separating the travel lane
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from the passing lane), review denied 959 N.E.2d 435 (Mass. 2011)
(unpublished table decision).
Other Massachusetts courts, however, have recognized
that one of Section 4A's core purposes is safety. See, e.g., Zion
v. Colonial Wholesale Beverages, Inc., No. 00-P-972, 2002 WL
1009067, at *1 (Mass. App. Ct. May 17, 2002) (per curium) (stating
that the purpose of Section 4A "is to require drivers to use care
in changing lanes" and that defendant's "straddling" of the center
yellow line did not violate the statute because it was done to
avoid another car during an emergency situation); Commonwealth v.
Santos, No. 06-754, 2007 WL 2851015, at *3 (Mass. Super. Ct. May
18, 2007) (suggesting, where the defendant's vehicle had crossed
the line marking the edge of a single-lane highway entrance ramp,
that the purpose of lines was "to alert the driver to the edge of
the travel lane and the nearby guardrail" and that Section 4A, for
that reason and others, did not apply). Given this purpose,
reading a safety requirement into this aspect of the statute may
ensure that "all parts [of Section 4A] shall be construed as
consistent with each other so as to form a harmonious enactment
effectual to accomplish its manifest purpose." Coll. Hill Props.,
LLC, 987 N.E.2d at 1241 (quoting Selectmen of Topsfield, 86 N.E.2d
at 68).7
7 At least one federal district court has endorsed this
reasoning, suggesting (in dicta) that a driver does not violate
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Nonetheless, given the statute's language and the lack
of any definitive commentary on the issue by Massachusetts courts,
the statute's application to the facts of this case is, giving
Lawrence every benefit of the doubt, at best ambiguous. Of course,
it would be nonsensical to read Section 4A in a way such that a
violation arises when a driver causes his or her vehicle to cross
a fog line even when it is unsafe to continue driving in a given
travel lane. See Zion, 2002 WL 1009067, at *1. But the statute
could reasonably be read to require the converse, i.e., that
motorists, when traveling on a road subject to the statute, must
travel or "drive" within a single lane even if it would pose no
immediate safety risk toward any other pedestrian or driver to
drive outside that lane or between two lanes. In any event, even
if Lawrence's argument is correct, any mistake made by Detective
Reynolds was objectively reasonable under Heien, and the district
court properly denied Lawrence's suppression motion.8
Section 4A where, for example, "[t]here is . . . no evidence [that
a] mini-swerve [across a fog line] into the breakdown lane was
unsafe in any way." United States v. Brito-Melo, No. 05-10227-
PBS, 2006 WL 2559860, at *6 (D. Mass. Sept. 5, 2006).
8 Lawrence briefly adverts to the rule of lenity, arguing that
any ambiguity in Section 4A should be resolved in his favor. See
United States v. Bass, 404 U.S. 336, 348 (1971) ("[W]here there is
ambiguity in a criminal statute, doubts are resolved in favor of
the defendant."). Resorting to the rule of lenity at this stage,
however, would be inappropriate since we need only recognize, but
not resolve, such ambiguity. See United States v. Councilman, 418
F.3d 67, 83 (1st Cir. 2005) (noting that the rule of lenity applies
only in cases of "grievous" ambiguity, such as when the purported
ambiguity in a statute cannot be resolved using traditional tools
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III. Conclusion
We emphasize that our holding in this case is a narrow
one. Given the particular facts of this case and the particular
statutory language at issue, we conclude that Detective Reynolds
held an objectively reasonable belief that Section 4A prohibited
a vehicle's straddling of a fog line while traveling, that he held
a reasonable suspicion that Lawrence had violated Section 4A, and
that his stop of the car was lawful under the Fourth Amendment.
For these reasons, the district court's decision is AFFIRMED.
of statutory construction). More to the point, even if the rule
of lenity may favor Lawrence in the context of a marked lanes
violation, Heien states that the ambiguity favors the Government
in the context of a Fourth Amendment challenge. See 135 S. Ct. at
536-40.
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